THE WAY WE LIVE NOW

New York City, NY: The Noonday Press/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1991. First Edition. First Printing.. Softcover. Fine/No Dust Jacket, As Issued.. New York City, NY: The Noonday Press/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1991. Softcover. Fine/None, As Issued. First Edition/First Printing. 30 pages. Artist Book rendition of the author's story on AIDS. One of the greatest short stories of the 20th century. The First Trade Edition. Based upon the Limited Edition, the British and American regular editions were published simultaneously as softcover originals only. The First Edition is now scarce. A brilliant production by Howard Hodgkin: Regular-sized volume format. Pictorial softcovers with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Text by Susan Sontag. Art by Howard Hodgkin. Printed on archival, thick coated (for the art) and uncoated (for the text) stock papers in the United Kingdom to the highest standards. Without DJ, as issued. Presents Susan Sontag's and Howard Hodgkin's "The Way We Live Now". Widely regarded as the best fictional account ever written on AIDS at the height of its devastation. The author's story is interpreted by the greatest British abstract painter of our time, in luminous aquatints that are beautifully reproduced in this edition. Hodgkin spent more than four years working on them to ensure, by his own account, that he captured the short story's finely modulated emotional temperature faithfully. The result is a sequence of moving images. Sontag presents the sufferer's illness from the points-of-view of his closest friends, who take turns visiting him, worrying about him, exchanging notes, and making life-enhancing arrangements. Each friend is named after a letter of the Roman alphabet (from A to Z), which is Sontag's concrete way of saying all of humanity has a stake in the illness and its sufferers' plight. The story was included in the "Best American Short Stories of the Twentieth Century" by John Updike, not a fan of Sontag, who nevertheless recognized the piece's significance and achievement. An absolute "must-have" title for Susan Sontag and Howard Hodgkin collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by Susan Sontag. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a great Artist Book. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Edition/First Printing (American) still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws. Copies of the Artist Book turn up occasionally, commanding $5000 if all of the prints are present. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. Susan Sontag is Winner of the MacArthur Genius Grant, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977 for "On Photography", the National Book Award in 2000 for "In America", and the Jerusalem Prize in 2001. Howard Hodgkin is Winner of the Turner Prize, the most prestigious British artistic award, among numerous other honors. Two of the most influential and important artists of the 20th century. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER SUSAN SONTAG AND HOWARD HODGKIN TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0224029169.